Nobody buys AI images the way they buy groceries — with a clear price per item. Instead the industry sells you currencies: credits, tokens, gems, monthly plans with “generous” allowances. AI image pricing models are designed to make comparison hard. Let's make it easy.
The three models, honestly
| Per-image | Credit packs | Subscription | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay | Fixed price per finished image | Prepaid bundle of credits | Monthly fee |
| Quiet months cost | Nothing | Credits may expire | Full fee anyway |
| Failed generations | You only pay for delivered images | May consume credits | Count against your allowance |
| Price clarity | Total known before ordering | Needs credit-to-image math | Needs usage math to justify |
| Leaving | Nothing lost | Unused balance lost | Cancel, lose access |
Where the money actually leaks
- Expiry. Credits that vanish after 30 or 90 days are a transfer from you to the platform. Check the expiry before the per-credit price.
- Per-generation vs per-image. If one finished image takes three generations, the “cheap” per-generation price triples. Per-image pricing charges the finished result.
- Revision pricing. Some tools charge full price for every tweak. Etch's remake is a flat ₹5 — the revision price should always be public.
- The quiet-month tax. A subscription you use twice in December costs the same as one you use daily in October. Seasonal businesses pay this tax hardest.
Do the math for your volume
Take your last three months of creative needs — not your aspirations, your actual orders. A boutique needing 8 product shots a month pays ₹29 × 8 monthly on per-image pricing, and nothing at all in a month with no shoots. A subscription bills you the same in the quiet month as in the busy one. A credit pack leaves a balance you'll scramble to spend before expiry. Per-image pricing is the only model where your cost curve matches your usage curve exactly.
A worked example: the festive campaign
Say you need Diwali creatives for your store: four festive images. Per-image pricing: a ₹49 4-pack, total known before you order. Credit-pack route: buy a bundle, spend generations per image, hope the festive rush doesn't eat your balance on retries. Subscription route: pay the full month for a week's campaign. The per-image total is the only one you can write on a whiteboard with confidence — and if one image misses, a ₹5 remake fixes it without touching the rest of the budget.
The 7-question transparency checklist
Before you pay any AI image tool, get straight answers to these — in writing, on their pricing page:
- Is the price per finished image or per generation attempt?
- Do credits or allowances expire? When?
- Do failed or rejected generations cost me anything?
- Can I try the real output before paying — not a demo gallery?
- Who checks quality before delivery — a human or nobody?
- What does a revision cost, exactly?
- If I stop paying, do I lose prepaid balance or my delivered images?
Why Etch prices per image
The catalog is public on the pricing page: single image ₹15, 4-pack ₹49, product photo ₹29, 5-second clip ₹19, Video Studio job ₹29, remake ₹5. No credits to expire, no subscription to cancel, no quiet-month tax. You can also try 3 free images a day before spending anything — the trial is real output, not a slideshow. Order on the create page, pay over UPI, and every image passes a human quality check.